Customer Reviews

Harm's Way

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Berebury Country Footpaths Society's rallying cry - "Every walk a challenge" - usually throws down a gauntlet in front of the owner of the land over which they propose to walk rather than the walkers, if the land has an official public footpath or right of way. The challenge for their walk over Footpath 79 turns out not to be the walk itself, but the decomposing human finger dropped by a crow in front of Wendy Lamport while she checks out the state of the footpath prior to the walk.

According to Dr. Dabbe, the Berebury police pathologist, the finger isn't medical waste - somewhere an unburied human body is lying in the open where a crow can pick off anything it wants. In the farming area of Great Rooden - which is also fox-hunting country - where could a corpse have lain long enough to get into this state? And who could it be, since no missing person reports seem to tally with the finger?

Of course, it could be any of several unaccounted-for people who aren't the usual type of missing person: the alcoholic black-sheep son of a local respectable farmer, an unfaithful husband with a mistress somewhere, or a financier who pulled a fast fade just ahead of the auditors.

Inspector CD Sloan and his assistant, Constable Crosby, first have to "catch their hare" - find the corpse. My compliments to any reader who deduces where the body was stashed before the search parties locate it. Once they find it, there's no doubt that this is murder, but plenty of doubt that the owner of the property on which it was found had any knowledge of it.

Apart from the murder and its clever cover-up, we finally get a chance to meet perpetual constable Ted Mason of Great Rooden: the bane of Superintendent Leeyes' existence, since he can't be manipulated by the carrot (promotion would mean leaving Great Rooden) or the stick (he's a good cop; Great Rooden is the quietest beat in the county through his efforts).

In C.D. Sloan's most bizarre case to date, a human finger turns up on a walkway in the country. This sends Sloan and his inimitable sidekick Crosby on the trail to find a corpse, and then to find a murderer. Those readers who don't like British Procedurals done in the classic format probably don't appreciate Catherine Aird as much as those of us that do like these, but she writes wonderful mysteries. The plots are always tight, and the characters are drawn very well, and everything is done so understated and so verry, verry, British. She writes with a tongue-in-cheek at all times, and the understated remarks and asides that come from her detective are wonderful. They are funny, warm and human. We also see a good example of the "long arm of the law" in this book as Sloan gets help from everywhere to track his killer. Wonderful little book, and one of the best puzzlers in this series.

First, I have to say that Bruce Montague does a workmanlike job of narrating this short (about 7.5 hour) police procedural by Catherine Aird. Several of the quoted lines are from songs and he came up with a nice compromise between singing the words and simply reading them.

The plot is simple. A finger is dropped by a crow and then Inspector C. D. Sloan and Constable Crosby are brought in to investigate the potential source of the finger. About half way through the body is found but it is still not clear which of the local missing persons it might be.

I used to grab any Catherine Aird book I could get my hands on, but I'm afraid my tastes have changed in the past 40 years, or maybe Ms Aird is not as snappy a writer as she used to be. The characters of her detectives are worn down to a few tics and twitches. There's almost no characterization except one character likes to grow roses, another is a "modern" dresser-- except modern in this case is a relative term-- because the book was originally published in 1984. There is a lot of literary references from Childe ballads to Kipling to Grave's "D'ye ken John Peel"-- the British huntsman, not the British DJ.

About half way in I was about to throw in the towel, but the body was found so I stayed the course although I'm not sure the game was worth the candle-- see this quoting thing is catching.

Recommended for those who like short, dry British police procedurals where the emphasis is on repeatedly questioning the potential suspects and witnesses rather than action and character.

Another clever British mystery from Catherine Aird. "Harm's Way" is part of her continuing series starring CID Detective Inspector C.D. Sloan who plies his trade in the English countryside. This case begins with the discovery of a human finger--dropped by a crow. Now DI Sloan must ferret out the clues to discover: where's the body; who's the body; and how it came to be missing a finger. With his less-than-helpful aide, Detective Constable Crosby, CD weeds through a cast of missing persons and motives galore only to find the crime is for one of the oldest, and most common, reasons.

Aird writes tight and entertaining mysteries with all the droll humor expected from an English author. I do warn readers, though, that if they aren't familiar with the 'Queen's English', British mannerisms, and British culture...you may not enjoy "Harm's Way" and CD as much as I do.

I truelly tried to finish this book but I have to admit I only was able to force myself to read 2/3rds of it. The book just seemed to flail with to many characters and not enough depth to any of them to make me want to even guess "who done it". I gave 2 stars as the benefit of the doubt. One I could not finish it so maybe the ending was great and I will never know (trust me, I won't loose any sleep over it) and second, this was the first Aird book I have read with this detective so maybe people that have already met some of the characters in previous books will be able to follow it better then me.

British mystery that starts out interesting when a human finger is dropped by a crow and found by two hikers, the solving of the supposed murder tends to be dull and fails to captivate the reader.